Mr. Satterthwaite was annoyed. Altogether it had been an unfortunate
day. They had started late; they had taken the wrong turning and lost
themselves amid the wilds of Salisbury Plain. Now it was close on
eight o'clock; they were still a matter of forty miles from Marswick
Manor, whither they were bound, and a puncture had supervened to render
matters still more trying.
Mr. Satterthwaite, looking like some small bird whose plumage had been
ruffled, walked up and down in front of the village garage while his
chauffeur conversed in hoarse undertones with the local expert.
"Half an hour _at_ least," said that worthy, pronouncing judgment.
"And lucky at that," supplemented Masters, the chauffeur. "More like
three quarters if you ask me."
"What is this--place, anyway?" demanded Mr. Satterthwaite fretfully.
Being a little gentleman considerate of the feelings of others, he
substituted the word "place" for "Godforsaken hole" which had first
risen to his lips.
"Kirtlington Mallet."
Mr. Satterthwaite was not much wiser, and yet a faint familiarity
seemed to linger round the name. He looked round him disparagingly.
Kirtlington Mallet seemed to consist of one straggling street, the
garage and the post office on one side of it balanced by three
indeterminate shops on the other side. Farther down the road, however,
Mr. Satterthwaite perceived something that creaked and swung in the
wind, and his spirits rose ever so slightly.
"There's an inn here, I see," he remarked.
"Bells and Motley," said the garageman. "That's it--yonder."
"If I might make a suggestion, sir," said Masters. "Why not try it?
They would be able to give you some sort of a meal, no doubt--not of
course, what you are accustomed to--" He paused apologetically, for Mr.
Satterthwaite was accustomed to the best cooking of continental chefs,
and had in his own service a _cordon bleu_ to whom he paid a fabulous
salary.
"We shan't be able to take the road again for another three quarters of
an hour, sir. I'm sure of that. And it's already past eight o'clock.
You could ring up Sir George Foster, sir, from the inn, and acquaint
him with the cause of our delay."
"You seem to think you can arrange everything, Masters," said Mr.
Satterthwaite snappily.
Masters, who did think so, maintained a respectful silence.
Mr. Satterthwaite, in spite of his earnest wish to discountenance
any suggestion that might possibly be made to him--he was in that
mood--nevertheless looked down the road toward the creaking inn sign
with faint inward approval. He was a man of birdlike appetite, an
epicure; but even such men can be hungry.
"The Bells and Motley," he said thoughtfully. "That's an odd name for
an inn. I don't know that I ever heard it before."
"There's odd folks come to it by all account," said the local man.
He was bending over the wheel, and his voice came muffled and
indistinct.
"Odd folks?" queried Mr. Satterthwaite. "Now what do you mean by that?"
The other hardly seemed to know what he meant.
"Folks that come and go. That kind," he said vaguely.
Mr. Satterthwaite reflected that people who come to an inn are almost
of necessity those who "come and go." The definition seemed to him to
lack precision. But nevertheless his curiosity was stimulated. Somehow
or other he had got to put in three quarters of an hour. The Bells and
Motley would be as good as anywhere else.
With his usual small, mincing steps he walked away down the road. From
afar there came a rumble of thunder. The mechanic looked up and spoke
to Masters: "There's a storm coming over. Thought I could feel it in
the air."
"Crikey," said Masters. "And forty miles to go."
"Ah!" said the other. "There's no need to be hurrying over this job.
You'll not be wanted to take the road till the storm's passed over.
That little boss of yours doesn't look as though he'd relish being out
in thunder and lightning."
"Hope they'll do him well at that place," muttered the chauffeur. "I'll
be pushing along there for a bite myself presently."
"Billy Jones is all right," said the garageman. "Keeps a good table."
Mr. William Jones, a big burly man of fifty, and landlord of the Bells
and Motley, was at this minute beaming ingratiatingly down on little
Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Can do you a nice steak, sir--_and_ fried potatoes, and as good a
cheese as any gentleman could wish for. This way, sir, in the coffee
room. We're not very full at present, the last of the fishing gentlemen
just gone. A little later we'll be full again for the hunting. Only one
gentleman here at present, name of Quin--"
Mr. Satterthwaite stopped dead.
"Quin?" he said excitedly. "Did you say Quin?"
"That's the name, sir. Friend of yours, perhaps?"
"Yes, indeed. Oh! yes, most certainly." Twittering with excitement,
Mr. Satterthwaite hardly realized that the world might contain more
than one man of that name. He had no doubts at all. In an odd way, the
information fitted in with what the man at the garage had said. "Folks
that come and go." A very apt description of Mr. Quin. And the name of
the inn too seemed a peculiarly fitting and appropriate one.
"Dear me, dear me," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "What a _very_ odd thing.
That we should meet like this! Mr. Harley Quin, is it not?"
"That's right, sir. This is the coffee room, sir. Ah! here is the
gentleman."
Tall, dark, smiling, the familiar figure of Mr. Quin rose from the
table at which he was sitting, and the well-remembered voice spoke.
"Ah! Mr. Satterthwaite, we meet again. An unexpected meeting!"
Mr. Satterthwaite was shaking him warmly by the hand.
"Delighted. Delighted, I'm sure. A lucky breakdown for me. My car, you
know. And you are staying here? For long?"
"One night only."
"Then I am indeed fortunate."
Mr. Satterthwaite sat down opposite his friend with a little sigh of
satisfaction, and regarded the dark, smiling face opposite him with a
pleasurable expectancy.
The other man shook his head gently.
"I assure you," he said, "that I have not a bowl of goldfish or a
rabbit to produce from my sleeve."
"Too bad," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, a little taken aback. "Yes, I must
confess--I do rather adopt that attitude toward you. A man of magic.
Ha, ha. That is how I regard you. A man of magic."
"And yet," said Mr. Quin, "it is you who do the conjuring tricks, not
I."
"Ah!" said Mr. Satterthwaite eagerly. "But I cannot do them without
you. I lack--shall we say--inspiration?"
Mr. Quin smilingly shook his head. "That is too big a word. I speak the
cue, that is all."
The landlord came in at that minute with bread and a slab of yellow
butter. As he set the things on the table there was a vivid flash of
lightning, and a clap of thunder almost overhead.
"A wild night, gentlemen."
"On such a night--" began Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.
"Funny now," said the landlord, unconscious of the question, "if those
weren't just the words I was going to use myself. It was just such a
night as this when Captain Harwell brought his bride home, the very day
before he disappeared forever."
"Ah!" cried Mr. Satterthwaite, suddenly. "Of course!"
He had got the clue. He knew now why the name Kirtlington Mallet
was familiar. Three months before he had read every detail of the
astonishing disappearance of Captain Richard Harwell. Like other
newspaper readers all over Great Britain, he had puzzled over the
details of the disappearance, and, also like every other Briton, had
evolved his own theories.
"Of course," he repeated. "It was at Kirtlington Mallet it happened."
"It was at this house he stayed for the hunting last winter," said
the landlord. "Oh! I knew him well. A main handsome young gentleman
and not one that you'd think had a care on his mind. He was done away
with--that's my belief. Many's the time I've seen them come riding home
together--he and Miss Le Couteau, and all the village saying there'd be
a match come of it--and sure enough, so it did. A very beautiful young
lady, and well thought of, for all she was a Canadian and a stranger.
Ah! there's some dark mystery there. We'll never know the rights of it.
It broke her heart. It did, sure enough. You've heard as she's sold the
place up and gone abroad; couldn't bear to go on here with everyone
staring and pointing after her--through no fault of her own, poor young
dear? A black mystery, that's what it is."
He shook his head, then, suddenly recollecting his duties, hurried from
the room.
"A black mystery," said Mr. Quin softly.
His voice was provocative in Mr. Satterthwaite's ear.
"Are you pretending that we can solve the mystery where Scotland Yard
failed?" he asked sharply.
The other made a characteristic gesture.
"Why not? Time has passed. Three months. That makes a difference."
"That is a curious idea of yours," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. "That
one sees things better afterward than at the time."
"The longer the time that has elapsed, the more things fall into
proportion. One sees them in their true relationship to one another."
There was a silence which lasted for some minutes.
"I am not sure," said Mr. Satterthwaite, in a hesitating voice, "that I
remember the facts clearly by now."
"I think you do," said Mr. Quin quietly.
It was all the encouragement Mr. Satterthwaite needed. His general role
in life was that of listener and looker-on. Only in the company of Mr.
Quin was the position reversed. There Mr. Quin was the appreciative
listener, and Mr. Satterthwaite took the center of the stage.
"It was just over a year ago," he said, "that Ashley Grange passed
into the possession of Miss Eleanor Le Couteau. It is a beautiful old
house, but it had been neglected and allowed to remain empty for many
years. It could not have found a better chatelaine. Miss Le Couteau
was a French Canadian, her forebears were _émigrés_ from the French
Revolution, and had handed down to her a collection of almost priceless
French relics and antiques. She was a buyer and a collector also, with
a very fine and discriminating taste, so much so that, when she decided
to sell Ashley Grange and everything it contained after the tragedy,
Mr. Cyrus G. Bradburn, the American millionaire, made no bones about
paying the fancy price of sixty thousand pounds for the Grange as it
stood."
Mr. Satterthwaite paused.
"I mention these things," he said apologetically, "not because they are
relevant to the story--strictly speaking, they are not--but to convey
an atmosphere, the atmosphere of young Mrs. Harwell."
Mr. Quin nodded. "Atmosphere is always valuable," he said gravely.
"So we get a picture of this girl," continued the other. "Just
twenty-three, dark, beautiful, accomplished, nothing crude and
unfinished about her. And rich--we must not forget that. She was an
orphan. A Mrs. St. Clair, a lady of unimpeachable breeding and social
standing, lived with her as duenna. But Eleanor Le Couteau had complete
control of her own fortune. And fortune hunters are never hard to seek.
At least a dozen impecunious young men were to be found dangling around
her on all occasions, in the hunting-field, in the ballroom, wherever
she went. Young Lord Leccan, the most eligible party in the country, is
reported to have asked her to marry him, but she remained heart-free.
That is, until the coming of Captain Richard Harwell.
"Captain Harwell had put up at the local inn for the hunting. He was a
dashing rider to hounds, a handsome laughing daredevil of a fellow.
You remember the old saying, Mr. Quin? 'Happy the wooing that's not
long doing.' The adage was carried out at least in part. At the end of
two months, Richard Harwell and Eleanor Le Couteau were engaged.
"The marriage followed three months afterward. The happy pair went
abroad for a two weeks' honeymoon, and then returned to take up their
residence at Ashley Grange. The landlord has just told us that it was
on a night of storm such as this that they returned to their home.
An omen, I wonder? Who can tell. Be that as it may, the following
morning very early--about half-past seven--Captain Harwell was seen
walking in the garden by one of the gardeners, John Mathias. He was
bareheaded, and was whistling. We have a picture there, a picture of
lightheartedness, of careless happiness. And yet from that minute, as
far as we know, no one ever set eyes on Captain Richard Harwell again."
Mr. Satterthwaite paused, pleasantly conscious of a dramatic moment.
The admiring glance of Mr. Quin gave him the tribute he needed, and he
went on.
"The disappearance was remarkable--unaccountable. It was not till the
following day that the distracted wife called in the police. As you
know, they have not succeeded in solving the mystery."
"There have, I suppose, been theories?" asked Mr. Quin.
"Oh! theories, I grant you. Theory No. 1, that Captain Harwell had
been murdered, done away with. But if so, where was the body? It could
hardly have been spirited away. And besides, what motive was there? As
far as was known, Captain Harwell had not an enemy in the world."
He paused abruptly, as though uncertain. Mr. Quin leaned forward. "You
are thinking," he said softly, "of young Stephen Grant."
"I am," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite. "Stephen Grant, if I remember
rightly, had been in charge of Captain Harwell's horses, and had been
discharged by his master for some trifling offense. On the morning
after the home-coming, very early, Stephen Grant was seen in the
vicinity of Ashley Grange, and could give no good account of his
presence there. He was detained by the police as being concerned in
the disappearance of Captain Harwell, but nothing could be proved
against him, and he was eventually discharged. It is true that he might
be supposed to bear a grudge against Captain Harwell for his summary
dismissal, but the motive was undeniably of the flimsiest. I suppose
the police felt they must do something. You see, as I said just now,
Captain Harwell had not an enemy in the world."
"As far as was known," said Mr. Quin reflectively.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded appreciatively.
"We are coming to that. What, after all, _was_ known of Captain
Harwell? When the police came to look into his antecedents they were
confronted with a singular paucity of material. Who was Richard
Harwell? Where did he come from? He had appeared literally out of the
blue, as it seemed. He was a magnificent rider, and apparently well
off. Nobody in Kirtlington Mallet had bothered to inquire further.
Miss Le Couteau had had no parents or guardians to make inquiries into
the prospects and standing of her fiancé. She was her own mistress.
The police theory at this point was clear enough. A rich girl and an
impudent impostor. The old story!
"But it was not quite that. True, Miss Le Couteau had no parents or
guardians, but she had an excellent firm of solicitors in London
who acted for her. Their evidence made the mystery deeper. Eleanor
Le Couteau had wished to settle a sum outright upon her prospective
husband, but he had refused. He himself was well off, he declared. It
was proved conclusively that Harwell never had a penny of his wife's
money. Her fortune was absolutely intact.
"He was, therefore, no common swindler; but was his object a refinement
of the art? Did he propose blackmail at some future date if Eleanor
Harwell should wish to marry some other man? I will admit that
something of that kind seemed to me the most likely solution. It has
always seemed so to me--until tonight."
Mr. Quin leaned forward, prompting him.
"Tonight?"
"Tonight--I am not satisfied with that. How did he manage to disappear
so suddenly and completely--at that hour in the morning, with every
laborer bestirring himself and tramping to work? Bareheaded, too."
"There is no doubt about that latter point--since the gardener saw him?"
"Yes--the gardener--John Mathias. Was there anything there, I wonder?"
"The police would not overlook him," said Mr. Quin.
"They questioned him closely. He never wavered in his statement. His
wife bore him out. He left his cottage at seven to attend to the
greenhouses; he returned at twenty minutes to eight. The servants in
the house heard the front door slam at about a quarter after seven.
That fixes the time when Captain Harwell left the house. Ah! yes, I
know what you are thinking."
"Do you, I wonder?" said Mr. Quin.
"I fancy so. Time enough for Mathias to have made away with his master.
But why, man, why? And if so, where did he hide the body?"
The landlord came in bearing a tray.
"Sorry to have kept you so long, gentlemen."
The odor from the dishes was pleasant to Mr. Satterthwaite's nostrils.
He felt gracious. "This looks excellent," he said. "Most excellent. We
have been discussing the disappearance of Captain Harwell. What became
of the gardener Mathias?"
"Took a place in Essex, I believe. Didn't care to stay hereabouts.
There were some as looked askance at him, you understand. Not that I
ever believed he had anything to do with it."
Mr. Satterthwaite helped himself. Mr. Quin followed suit. The landlord
seemed disposed to linger and chat. Mr. Satterthwaite had no objection;
on the contrary. "This Mathias now," he said. "What kind of a man was
he?"
"Middle-aged chap, must have been a powerful fellow once, but bent and
crippled with rheumatism. He had that mortal bad, was laid up many
a time with it, unable to do any work. For my part, I think it was
sheer kindness on Miss Eleanor's part to keep him on. He'd outgrown
his usefulness as a gardener, though his wife managed to make herself
useful up at the house. Been a cook, she had, and always willing to
lend a hand."
"What sort of a woman was she?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite, quickly.
The landlord's answer disappointed him. "A plain body. Middle-aged,
and dour-like in manner. Deaf, too. Not that I ever knew much of them.
They'd only been here a month, you understand, when the thing happened.
They say he'd been a rare good gardener in his time, though. Wonderful
testimonials Miss Eleanor had with him."
"Was she interested in gardening?" asked Mr. Quin softly.
"No, sir, I couldn't say that she was, not like some of the ladies
round here who pay good money to gardeners and spend the whole of their
time grubbing about on their knees as well. Foolishness I call it. You
see, Miss Le Couteau wasn't here very much except in the winter for the
hunting. The rest of the time she was up in London and away in those
foreign seaside places where they say the French ladies don't so much
as put a toe into the water for fear of spoiling their costumes, or so
I've heard."
Mr. Satterthwaite smiled. "There was no--er--woman of any kind mixed up
with Captain Harwell?" he asked. Though his first theory was disposed
of, he nevertheless clung to his idea.
Mr. William Jones shook his head. "Nothing of that sort. Never a
whisper of it. No, it's a dark mystery, that's what it is."
"And your theory? What do you yourself think?" persisted Mr.
Satterthwaite.
"What do I think?"
"Yes."
"Don't know what to think. It's my belief as how he was done in, but
who by I can't say. I'll fetch you gentlemen the cheese."
He stumped from the room bearing empty dishes. The storm, which had
been quieting down, suddenly broke out with redoubled vigor. A flash
of forked lightning and a great clap of thunder close upon each other
made little Mr. Satterthwaite jump, and before the last echoes of
the thunder had died away, a girl came into the room carrying the
advertised cheese.
She was tall and dark, and handsome in a sullen fashion of her own.
Her likeness to the landlord of the Bells and Motley was apparent
enough to proclaim her his daughter.
"Good evening, Mary," said Mr. Quin. "A stormy night."
She nodded. "I hate these stormy nights," she muttered.
"You are afraid of thunder, perhaps?" said Mr. Satterthwaite kindly.
"Afraid of thunder? Not me! There's little that I'm afraid of. No, but
the storm sets them off. Talking, talking, the same thing over and over
again, like a lot of parrots. Father begins it: 'It reminds me, this
does, of the night poor Captain Harwell--' And so on, and so on." She
turned on Mr. Quin. "You've heard how he goes on. What's the sense of
it? Can't anyone let past things be?"
"A thing is only past when it is done with," said Mr. Quin.
"Isn't this done with? Suppose he wanted to disappear? These fine
gentlemen do sometimes."
"You think he disappeared of his own free will?"
"Why not? It would make better sense than to suppose a kindhearted
creature like Stephen Grant murdered him. What should he murder him
for, I should like to know? Stephen had had a drop too much one day
and spoke to him saucy like, and got the sack for it. But what of it?
He got another place just as good. Is that a reason to murder a man in
cold blood?"
"But surely," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "the police were quite satisfied
of his innocence."
"The police! What do the police matter? When Stephen comes into the bar
of an evening, every man looks at him queer like. They don't really
believe he murdered Harwell, but they're not sure, and so they look at
him sideways and edge away. Nice life for a man, to see people shrink
away from you, as though you were something different from the rest of
the folks. Why won't Father hear of our getting married, Stephen and
I? 'You can take your pigs to a better market, my girl. I've nothing
against Stephen, but--well, we don't know, do we?'"
She stopped, her breast heaving with the violence of her resentment.
"It's cruel, cruel, that's what it is," she burst out. "Stephen, that
wouldn't hurt a fly! And all through life there'll be people who'll
think he did it. It's turning him queer and bitter like. I don't
wonder, I'm sure. And the more he's like that, the more people think
there must have been something in it."
Again she stopped. Her eyes were fixed on Mr. Quin's face, as though
something in it was drawing this outburst from her.
"Can nothing be done?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.
He was genuinely distressed. The thing was, he saw, inevitable. The
very vagueness and unsatisfactoriness of the evidence against Stephen
Grant made it the more difficult for him to disprove the accusation.
The girl whirled round on him. "Nothing but the truth can help him,"
she cried. "If Captain Harwell were to be found, if he was to come
back. If the true rights of it were only known--"
She broke off with something very like a sob, and hurried quickly from
the room.
"A fine-looking girl," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "A sad case altogether.
I wish--I very much wish that something could be done about it."
His kind heart was troubled.
"We are doing what we can," said Mr. Quin. "There is still nearly half
an hour before your car can be ready."
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him. "You think we can come at the truth
just by--talking it over like this?"
"You have seen much of life," said Mr. Quin gravely. "More than most
people."
"Life has passed me by," said Mr. Satterthwaite bitterly.
"But in so doing has sharpened your vision. Where others are blind you
can see."
"It is true," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I am a great observer."
He plumed himself complacently. The moment of bitterness was past. "I
look at it like this," he said after a minute or two. "To get at the
cause for a thing, we must study the effect."
"Very good," said Mr. Quin approvingly.
"The effect in this case is that Miss Le Couteau--Mrs. Harwell, I
mean--is a wife and yet not a wife. She is not free--she cannot marry
again. And look at it as we will, we see Richard Harwell as a sinister
figure, a man from nowhere with a mysterious past."
"I agree," said Mr. Quin. "You see what all are bound to see, what
cannot be missed, Captain Harwell in the limelight, a suspicious
figure."
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him doubtfully. The words seemed somehow to
suggest a faintly different picture to his mind. "We have studied the
effect," he said. "Or call it the _result_. We can now pass--"
Mr. Quin interrupted him. "You have not touched on the result on the
strictly material side."
"You are right," said Mr. Satterthwaite, after a moment or two for
consideration. "One should do the thing thoroughly. Let us say then
that the result of the tragedy is that Mrs. Harwell is a wife and not
a wife, unable to marry again, that Mr. Cyrus Bradburn has been able
to buy Ashley Grange and its contents for--sixty thousand pounds, was
it?--and that somebody in Essex has been able to secure John Mathias
as a gardener! For all that, we do not suspect 'somebody in Essex' or
Mr. Cyrus Bradburn of having engineered the disappearance of Captain
Harwell."
"You are sarcastic," said Mr. Quin.